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Returns

Small merchants can transform their shipping and mailing operations into an asset rather than a nuisance and cost center. A focus on quick wins that add up over time can fatten your profit margins while delivering increasingly better customer experiences. Learn how refining your strategy can lead to business improvement.

The returns process shouldn’t be complicated. However, with return rates growing rapidly alongside ecommerce itself, it’s becoming harder for retailers to provide a great experience while also minding the ballooning cost.

A growing trend in reusable transport packaging has created an opportunity to add value through reverse logistics of returnable and reusable assets. Once considered a necessary cost center, this aspect of reverse logistics can actually increase efficiency while decreasing costs if handled well, a win-win for your business.

Shoppers love nothing more than convenience – well ok, maybe price trumps it – but convenience definitely sells. And when retailers offer a seamless ecommerce returns process, it plays a pivotal role in consumer’s purchasing decisions, according to an annual report from UPS.

Shoppers love try before you buy (TBYB), a growing strategy that lets them order multiple items and send most of it back. It can boost ecommerce sales but also balloon return rates. So how do you take advantage of the TBYB opportunity while escaping the potential pitfalls that can kill your margins? An expert panel explains how.

Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA) remains very popular among Amazon sellers, with over 650,000 using it in the U.S., but it’s not the right solution for everyone. So how do you make that decision? Executives from Complemar, Motor City Distributing and Tech Armor discussed the pros and cons at this year’s Ecommerce Operations Summit.

FedEx has partnered with discount retailer Dollar General, offering dropoff and pickup services at 8,000 Dollar General stores by the end of 2020, giving it rural penetration it lacked. Along with its own stores and partnerships that also include Walgreens, Kroger and Albertsons, FedEx now has a network of 62,000 locations.

Five months after investing in two-day ecommerce delivery and returns service ShopRunner, UPS is partnering with the company, offering a year’s free subscription to the 47 million U.S. members of its My Choice program. ShopRunner’s 100+ retail partners include Ann Taylor, Bloomingdale’s, Chico’s and Kate Spade New York.

As online sales grow at double-digit rates, ecommerce returns are growing even faster, typically three to four times greater than for stores, and carry a high level of value. The opportunity is to get online returns from the store back to fulfillment centers quickly in order to maximize their value. Here’s how to make it happen.

Happy Returns has received an $11 million investment from PayPal Holdings Inc., the venture arm of the payment solution company, with both pledging to reduce reverse logistics friction for merchants. The investment will also help Happy Returns toward its goal of 1,000 ecommerce returns bars by the end of the year.